To hell with f15s, We need Space Command, Brave men and women patrolling the Cosmos to protect mankind from The Meteors of Doom, or Stratos 4, teenage girls in skin tight spacesuits flying rocket assisted fighter jets to shoot down the meteors.
Ok, I couldn't help myself.

It's sad to say but it's going to take millions of people dying and billions of dollars damage before the powers that be start taking these things seriously.

Thank Obama for retiring the only jet aircraft capable of launching an interceptor at an ICBM or by implication, an incomming Impactor.

NASA needs to unmothball those F-15s and set them up to scramble.

Um, the planes were retired because they are 40 years old. Aircraft do have a service life, you know. And if you fly them too hard and too fast for too long they start falling apart in mid-air. Like what happened to a few of those F-15s before they were retired.

Besides, a missile that might be perfectly capable of knocking an ICBM re-entry vehicle out of the sky won't do much for a hundred-foot-wide space rock coming in at 100,000mph.

A plane would have to be in just the right place at just the right time, it would have a very small target window and even then it would have limited effectiveness. No, an effective meteor defense needs to happen long before a meteor reaches the atmosphere, jets aren't the answer.

A plane would have to be in just the right place at just the right time, it would have a very small target window and even then it would have limited effectiveness. No, an effective meteor defense needs to happen long before a meteor reaches the atmosphere, jets aren't the answer.

We really need to work on serious deflection strategies. This one was a minor event; the next one might not be.

I'm disappointed that this didn't happen over a major US population center like New York, or even better, D.C.. Nothing short of needing a change of underwear and having millions of scared constituents pounding on the gate will get the politicians in congress to act and give proper funding to skywatch and research projects.

How come scientists didn't see it coming? Or if they did, why didn't they made the public aware of it? Instances like these really alarms people, the talk about the end of the world is again brought up. Although a lot of people were still in shock and injured, they are more concerned of how this will affect them financially and the damage to properties that the meteor fall caused.Good thing Insurance companies cover things that are unlikely to happen such as meteor strike.Article resource: Is my home covered against meteor damage?

Besides, a missile that might be perfectly capable of knocking an ICBM re-entry vehicle out of the sky won't do much for a hundred-foot-wide space rock coming in at 100,000mph.

I note further that those anti-ICBM tests only worked when the target missile could be silhouetted by a balloon; tests without a backdrop tended to end in failure. There's a reason no "success" announcement was made.

Incidentally, Obama didn't mothball anything; that was a DoD decision. The President of the United States does not micromanage every single department - that became unwieldy about the time Jefferson was elected. And, contrary to the expectations of some of our citizens on both political extremes, the President is not a king; he cannot issue royal decrees for anything that isn't properly a function of the executive. (Well, technically he can, I suppose, if he wants to have the courts overturn the order later...)

And anything an F-15 can launch, an F-18 can launch. Not an issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brendz23

How come scientists didn't see it coming?

Because it was small, dark, and coming from a direction other than anyone was looking - they were all watching the passing asteroid, and this chunk came in on a different trajectory. Also because nobody's funding any observatories looking for relatively small rocks headed for our planet.

-------------------------------------------
Originally Posted by hfmudd

Quote:

You are special, you are unique, and you are passionate. You are also insignificant. Get used to it.

There is the issue that an F/A-18 tops out at 1.8 mach, while an F-15 can do 2.5+ and sustain supersonic for much longer. With the F-14 and the F-15 both retired, the United States no longer has a Mach 2 fighter.

Again, not that it makes any difference when trying to chase down a meteor.